The Israelis are so 'over' the issue of their existence it does not come up on the radar screen.

The fact is … the Arab/Muslims who cannot accept the Israeli presence will instead feel Israeli vengeance.

There's no 'nice' way to say it. There's no 'nice' way to explain it.

Arab/Muslims like Omar … think/feel the ‘ummah’ will come to their rescue … when the truth is/was … the opposite … he can’t see that the dysfunction of the Arab/Muslim World is the reason for the NAQBA … it’s not about the Jews/Zionists/Israelis … it’s never been

You said: "the Palestinians who very existence as a state is on the negotiation table"

False. UN181 called for an Arab and a Jewish State. The Arab/Muslim world INCLUDING the indigenous Arab/Muslims under their leader, the fugitive Nazi WAR CRIMINAL Haj Husseini, were AGAINST this idea. Israel accepted and on May 14, 1948 declared its independence. The Arab/Muslims attacked the nascent state … were defeated and LOST EVEN MORE TERRITORY THAN THAT WAS ASSIGNED TO the Jewish State. The indigenous Arabs were never given their independence … their patrimony stolen by Egypt and Jordan.

Frankly, it was an INTERNAL Arab/Muslim problem.

Israel managed to hang on from that time forward. They are thriving as a country, society, polity and in almost all ways TODAY.

THE DISPARITY WITH THEIR CIRCUMSTANCE AND THE ARAB/MUSLIM WORLD IS SHOCKING.

After 1967, the ALBATROSS, the Arab/Muslims of the WB & Gaza … have become ISRAEL'S PROBLEM TO SOLVE? This is frankly ludicrous.

The Arab/Muslims of the WB & Gaza became a 'rogue' people bent on terrorism and its people dysfunctional as human beings.

There's been progress made to their 'humanity quotient' since 1967 and slowly they have become a people. Their leadership is still locked into 'cliches' … what needs to happen is a change in leadership … Fayaad is one who could become a 'father figure' certainly he's the pick of the litter. Resistance is OVER … the Arab/Muslims in the WB & Gaza must acknowledge that TRUTH in order to move forward.

You can substitute Berlusconi with Netanyahu and A. Lieberman and substitute Italy with Israel and you will reach the same conclusion as in your leader and front page article: Netanyahu and Lieberman are screwing Israel, past, present and future.

This, in a Western medium with an overwhelming Judeo/Christian readership and a probable majoritarian Judeo respondents , may go on and on with lies, fabrications, pseudo and/ or selective history , false and partial parallels attempting to rebut solid historical fact.

Be that what it may two cardinal facts are emerging universally:
1-That what to them was a “feat” is increasingly perceived as a heinous crime committed against the indigenous people of the land: the Palestinian people
2-That the very legitimacy of the state that came to be as a product of that feat to some crime to others is severely questionable.

And two unchallengeable facts are dawning on its nationals, internally, and friends, universally:
1-That what seemed to be, practically, a walk over at the time was not only ephemeral but was genuinely deceptive with seminal, nationalist/religious, opposition entrenching and ever widening in both human and geographical scope.
2-That the output of that crime/feat is progressively being rejected and opposed.

Israelis and friends can do worse, for themselves and for the region, than explore avenues for regional acceptance without which Israel will remain, at best, an isolated pariah and a worst ruins of a catastrophic war.

Tzatz: "What changed after 1973? THE ARAB OIL EMBARGO which sent prices soaring and changed the politics of the Arab/Israeli Conflict."

Are you saying that intellectuals stopped sympathizing with Israel because their gas bill became too high? Seriously?

The fact is that the relation between the left and Israel suffered a long and continuous erosion since its very beginning. Intellectuals initially sympathized with it because of the Holocaust and because of the socialist-inspired kibbutz movement, but this didn't last very long.

Remember that many European leftists took their cue from the USSR, and the Soviets decided to change sides in the Middle East with the rise of the nationalist Pan-Arab movements, and specially after the outrageous attempt to take by force the Suez canal by Israel, Britain and France, which the Soviets and the US promptly thwarted. Israel started looking less like a helpless enlightened outpost of civilization, and more like the colonial bully it was.

But I'd say that what actually defined the perception of leftist intellectuals towards Israel was the 1967 war and the advent of occupation. Its conjunction with the Vietnam war and other Cold War conflicts around the world only stressed the similarities between the Palestinian struggle and that of many other left wing movements trying to rid their nations of Western or Western-backed regimes.

In that period, before the oil embargo, Jean-Luc Goddard had begun his unfinished work "Jusqu'à la Victoire" (1970), about PLO fighters. That same year, Jean Genet was spending six months in Palestinian refugee camps, secretly meeting Yasser Arafat near Amman, which inspired his book "Prisoner of Love". On 31 January 1970, Bertrand Russell issued a statement which condemned Israeli aggression in the Middle East and called for Israeli withdrawal from territory occupied in 1967. This was Russell's final political statement or act. It was read out at the International Conference of Parliamentarians in Cairo on 3 February 1970, the day after his death. And the list goes on.

If intellectuals, and anyone with any sense of decency and grasp of what Human Rights mean, have been progressively distancing themselves from Israel, it has nothing to do with oil, but with the increasingly obvious colonial and repressive nature of the Israeli regime, which no amount of propaganda can hide any longer.

It is curious that what so many people think applies to Israel they will not apply to the Palestinians.

For example the comment: "No country on Earth would ever be expected to have its very existence as a chip on the negotiation table. None, but Israel of course."

Which is false.

It is after all the Palestinians who very existence as a state is on the negotiation table. Additionally they have been told that they will never have a full state of their own and have, for example, to accept a military presence by a Israel on their soil (if they ever get a country).

Why is it that so many of Israels defenders as such hypocrites?

They keep complaining about others but never once examine the validity/fairness of the criticism they throw about.

Tzatz, don't insist, the flight of the Palestinians has been long and deeply studied by Israeli historians, and it has been made abundantly clear that the main reason for their departure (which doesn't mean that some Palestinians couldn't have other reasons) was the Jewish militias' military actions.

Benny Morris, in his "1948 and After", wrote:

"Haganah intelligence and Western diplomatic missions in the Middle East at the time, around 5–6 May 1948, picked up, recorded and quoted from Arab orders and appeals (by King Abdullah I, Arab Liberation Army Commander Fawzi Qawuqji, and Damascus Radio) to the Arabs of Palestine to stay put in their homes or, if already in exile, to return to Palestine. Not evidence of "Arab orders" to flee but of orders to stay put during those crucial pre-invasion weeks. It flies in the face of the chronology, which there is no getting around. There was an almost universal one-to-one correspondence between Jewish attacks in specific localities and on specific towns and Arab flight from these localities and towns:

-Tiberias was attacked by the Golani Brigade on 17 April; its Arab population evacuated on 18 April.
Arab Haifa was attacked and defeated on 21–22 April; most of its 70,000 Arab inhabitants, evacuated the city over 22 April -1 May.
-Jaffa was assaulted by the Irgun Zva´i Leumi on 25–27 April; the bulk of its 70,000-80,000 population fled the city between 25 April and 13 May.
-Safad was attacked and conquered by the Palmah on 9–10 May; its Arab population of 10,000 fled the city on 10 May.
-Eastern Galilee was conquered by Palmah units between 2 May and 25 May; the villages in the area decamped during that period. And so on."

"What this means is that Haganah / Irgun /IDF attack was usually the principal and final precipitant of Arab flight....[].. For if the Arab order/orders had been issued on 10 April, why did the inhabitants of Haifa wait a fortnight, and those of Safad or Eastern Galilee a month or more to depart? And it the order was issued, say, on 25 April, why did the inhabitants of Tiberias depart three days before; or those of Safad wait a further fortnight before leaving?""

Big chunk of Polish territory is known as Silesia; parts of it were liberated from German speaking and self-identifying as Germans population and replaced by Poles – all legally and internationally recognized.

It was called “population exchange", and happened as well after the creation of modern India and Pakistan. Same goes for Czechoslovakia, Greece and Turkey, Bulgaria and Turkey, and so on and so force.

There is nothing unique in this practice, which you prefer to call “dislocating them (whoever they are) from their own homeland”. It's purely emotional, propagandist approach, but your emotions don't change historical facts.

Arthur D Reid
Did either Belgium or Poland, or both, come into existence by :
- "liberating" a country, a land, from its own population
-dislocating them from their own homeland,
-dispossessing them from their legitimate land and other property,
-disfranchising them then
-subjugating them in their own birthright: Palestine!
As Isreal DID in Palestine???

When either or both came into being was 72% of either population FOREIGN BORN??
May we expect an answer from you Mr. Reid??

Israel recognizes Arab countries and doesn't put their existence or right to exist under any question marks. They must reciprocate - that is the point from which to approach any bilateral or multilateral problems.

When commenting on Mideast events, The Economist writers abandoned any attempts of disguising their anti-Israel bias, and went full-throttle obscene.

Palestinians from camps in Syria made their attempt at breaching not “the fence”, but the border of a sovereign country.

By equating killings of fellow Syrians on their own soil by Boy Assad's security forces with self-inflicted death of armed with Molotov cocktails foreign frontier breakers, this journal had sunken to the lowest point of tabloid-style libel.

@ omar Ibrahim You are mistaken other countries have been created like Israel examples are Belgium and Poland. Belgium was created solely because of the Congress of Vienna and Poland was resurrected after about 200 years of foreign rule by the League of Nations very much like Israel.

I hope I’m not the only one to notice that the protests that happened on naqba were not about any specific violation on Israel’s part they were protesting Israel very existence I find this deeply disturbing and sad. Are the Palestinian people ready for another state ( yes another they have Jordan and Gaza already there is no difference between the Jordanians and Palestinians.)

Straight Forward, the first poster here , is right stating:
" No country on Earth would ever be expected to have its very existence as a chip on the negotiation table. None, but Israel of course."
However the reason behind that is obvious and should NOT escape him.
Israel’s very existence as a “chip on the negotiation table” is, of course, due to the very simple fact/reason that there is no country in the whole world that came into being the way Israel did nor behaved the way Israel did and does.

Israel came into being by "liberating" a country, a land, from its own population : dislocating them from their own homeland, dispossessing them from their legitimate land and other property, disfranchising them then subjugating them in their own birthright: Palestine!
That unique, to Israel, mode of birth is unknown to the world and to modern historyl hence the "ship on the negotiation table"!

Israel, historically a mere colony, that came to be a nation/state was established by ALIENS in a land alien to them by any standard; except the presumed the 30-40 centuries (?) old Divine promise made to his "chosen people" that materialized in the 20th century!

First established in the classical colonialist mode of forced entry against the will and opposition of the indigenous people of the land it coveted, Palestine, Israel chose to add its peculiar touch to the classical colonialist model by attempting, and partially succeeding, in ethnically cleansing the land from its native population.
Both Israel and Israelis, at birth, were Aliens: when Israel declared its independence as the Jewish nation/state , in 1948, 72% of its Jewish population was FOREIGN BORN , 40 of the 43 signatories to its declaration of independence were also Foreign born as were its first four prime minister.

How more ALIEN can anything, anyone, be?
Its very existence, as the Jewish nation/state or the nation/state of the Jews, is not only suspect but is certainly questionable both legally and , for whatever it is worth with in a USA dominated world, morally.

Had Israel been satisfied with its UNGA Partition of Palestine allocation ( 52% of total area of Palestine for 38 % of the then total population) and had it allowed the repatriation , the Return of Palestinian Refugees to their homeland, equally mandated by the UNGA, Israel could claim legitimacy through UN recognition/legitimacy.
Its failure to abide by either of the above two cardinal resolutions Israel has undermined to the point of nullification its very legitimacy and, consequently, its right to exist as a nation/state for the Jews that excludes the indigenous population of the land it dominates!
Israel’s present SOLE basis of legitimacy is its possession of the land of Palestine achieved and sustained through military conquest and military force.
Israel can do worse than recall that whatever was done by force can be undone by force!
And that is precisely what Israel is pressuring its adversaries into!
And that will be the enjeu in the coming decades: Israel’s very existence as Israel in Palestine.

a generation ago … say up to 1973 … presumably BEFORE you were born Froy …

the WORLD sided with Israel NOT the Arabs on the question of the Arab/Israeli Conflict

Lawrence Soloman, writing in the Financial Post, says:

"Prior to the 1973-74 OPEC Oil Crisis, Israel was the darling of the left, extolled as a feisty, altruistic country that made socialism work in a hostile neighbourhood of Arab military dictatorships and Muslim theocracies. The liberal press defended Israel against those who objected to Israel’s existence. The liberal intelligentsia — Jew and non-Jew alike — sent their youth to Israeli kibbutzes, to be inspired by this utopian model of communal life where all received the same wage, regardless of occupation."

What changed after 1973?

THE ARAB OIL EMBARGO which sent prices soaring and changed the politics of the Arab/Israeli Conflict.

He's not very 'kind' to the Arab/Muslim side of this conflict. The Arabs he says 'DON'T HAVE TIME ON THEIR SIDE' … something I've been saying for sometime on these pages.

FYI … here's more:

"In the decades after the United Nations established the state of Israel, Israel was popular in the Western world, seen as a plucky little country that, against all odds, had defeated the combined armies of eight invading Arab nations. The Academy Award winning 1960 movie, Exodus, starring Paul Newman, portrayed Israel heroically, as generally did the Western press."

He goes on to say: "The West in those first decades following Israel’s creation did not blame Israel for the many Palestinian Arabs kept in refugee camps — it blamed Israel’s Arab neighbours for refusing to take them in, unlike Israel which had welcomed the almost one million Jewish refugees who had been expelled from Muslim lands.

The West then also did not blame Israel for the Arabs’ continued belligerence against Israel, whose UN-established borders Arab nations refused to recognize. The West saw Israel as a democracy and as an idealistic member of the Socialist International; it saw the major Arab countries as backward military dictatorships, allied with the communist Soviet Union and overtly hostile to Western interests."

'if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck' … then you must be a LEFTY/LIBERAL ARAB/MUSLIM APOLOGIST …

You said: “One full fourth of refugees had already fled or been expelled from their homes before Israel's declaration of independence”

As it turns out … today's Haaretz … a paper you often quote … had an article by Ephraim Karsh, research professor of Middle East and Mediterranean studies at King's College London, director of the Middle East Forum (Philadelphia ) and author, most recently, of "Palestine Betrayed."

Here are excerpts from his article:

"While most Palestinian Arabs needed little encouragement to take to the road, large numbers of them were driven from their homes by their own leaders and/or the "Arab Liberation Army" that had entered Palestine prior to the end of the Mandate, whether out of military considerations or in order to prevent them from becoming citizens of the prospective Jewish state. Of this there is an overwhelming and incontrovertible body of contemporary evidence - intelligence briefs, captured Arab documents, press reports, personal testimonies and memoirs, and so on and so forth."

"In the largest and best-known example of Arab-instigated exodus, tens of thousands of Arabs were ordered or bullied into leaving the city of Haifa (on April 21-22 ) on the instructions of the Arab Higher Committee, the effective "government" of the Palestinian Arabs. Only days earlier, Tiberias' 6,000-strong Arab community had been similarly forced out by its own leaders, against local Jewish wishes (a fortnight after the exodus, Sir Alan Cunningham, the last British high commissioner of Palestine, reported that the Tiberias Jews "would welcome [the] Arabs back" ). In Jaffa, Palestine's largest Arab city, the municipality organized the transfer of thousands of residents by land and sea; in Jerusalem, the AHC ordered the transfer of women and children, and local gang leaders pushed out residents of several neighborhoods, while in Beisan the women and children were ordered out as Transjordan's Arab Legion dug in."

"In the words of a British intelligence report: "After the Jews had gained control of the town, and in spite of a subsequent food shortage, many would not have responded to the call for a complete evacuation but for the rumors and propaganda spread by the National Committee members remaining in the town. Most widespread was a rumor that Arabs remaining in Haifa would be taken as hostages by [the] Jews in the event of future attacks on other Jewish areas: and an effective piece of propaganda with its implied threat of retribution when the Arabs recapture the town, is that [those] people remaining in Haifa acknowledged tacitly that they believe in the principle of a Jewish State." "

"Nor was this phenomenon confined to Palestinian cities. The deliberate depopulation of Arab villages too, and their transformation into military strongholds was a hallmark of the Arab campaign from the onset of hostilities. As early as December 1947, villagers in the Tul Karm sub-district were ordered out by their local leaders, and in mid-January Haganah intelligence briefs reported the evacuation of villages in the Hula Valley to accommodate local gangs and newly arrived ALA forces."

"By February, this phenomenon had expanded to most parts of the country, gaining considerable momentum in April and May as Arab forces throughout Palestine were being comprehensively routed. On April 18, the Haganah's intelligence branch in Jerusalem reported a fresh general order to remove the women and children from all villages bordering Jewish localities. Twelve days later, its Haifa counterpart reported an ALA directive to evacuate all Arab villages between Tel Aviv and Haifa in anticipation of a new general offensive. In early May, as fighting intensified in the eastern Galilee, local Arabs were ordered to transfer all women and children from the Rosh Pina area, while in the Jerusalem sub-district, Transjordan's Arab Legion ordered the emptying of scores of villages."

Tzatz, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, you don't need a signed document stating that it is indeed a duck. Israel's ethnic cleansing is so evident (80% of the population was expelled, for God's sake) that it's useless to deny it. Palestinians were harassed, terrorized, attacked, and in some events, carted away like cattle to the borders. Textbook ethnic cleansing.

You said: “One full fourth of refugees had already fled or been expelled from their homes before Israel's declaration of independence”

The war had already been ONGOING since NOVEMBER 1947 … it was a Civil War … indigenous Arabs vs Jews … it was touch and go since NO NEW ARMS COULD BE DELIVERED TO THE JEWS DUE TO THE BRITISH BLOCKADE … only after April/May 1948 when new arms arrived … did the tide turn DECISIVELY FOR THE JEWS/ZIONISTS/ISRAELIS

You said: “Israel knew well that their "Jewish state" would never work if they allowed the hundreds of thousands of indigenous Arabs to remain”

This is Arab propaganda. All the archives of the Israelis have been released … THOSE OF THE ARAB/MUSLIMS STATES HAVE NEVER BEEN RELEASED … can you guess why … Froy? There has never been a ‘smoking gun’ where the policy of the Zionists/Jews/Israelis EXPLICITLY called for expulsion. The Arabs were exhorted by the AHC to clear the battlefield of women and children but then switched to ‘stay put’ … the Arabs were UNPREPARED FOR THE WAR THEY SOUGHT TO FIGHT … the indigenous Arabs were hapless pawns of the AHC and the Arab States … they left their homes in UNPRECENDENTED NUMBERS … FOR MANY REASONS … INCLUDING BUT NOT EXCLUSIVELY BECAUSE OF MILITARY NECESSITY …

The truth is they were not allowed back … this is TRUE … they will not be allowed back … this is TRUE …

You said: “What is relevant is how Israel came to acquire the remaining 92% of it.”

Exactly. The League of Nations in 1922 granted the Mandate for Palestine to Britain and its MISSION STATEMENT was to lead to a homeland for the Jews … in 1947 after much consultation the UNITED NATIONS voted to create an Arab and a Jewish State … so THAT’S HOW THE JEWS/ZIONISTS/ISRAELIS GOT TITLE TO THE STATE OF ISRAEL

You said: “That's preposterous.:

What’s preposterous is the attitude of the Arab/Muslims and their Lefty/Liberal ‘toadies’ … after the 1967 war … the Arab League adopted the 3 NO’S – NO RECOGNITION – NO PEACE – NO TALKING TO ISRAEL … the results are on your TV … surely in the 40 + Years since the war the Arab/Muslims could have found a mechanism to:

a) deal with the issue of the Refugees

b) acknowledge that Israel will continue to exist as a Jewish State

c) make a final settlement so that all parties can move on in dignity and peace